'Science on the Sound' Lecture - Bats of North Carolina

This program was broadcast live on February 20, 2020.

Join us for an evening lecture with Marissa Liverman,
Citizen Science and Conservation Specialist at the Outer Banks Center for Wildlife Education.

Come learn more about our flying furry friends and how you can dispel the many myths surrounding them. Bats are battling many conservation issues with the largest one being white-nose syndrome which has caused mass mortality of cave-hibernating bats in North America including in North Carolina. Liverman will discuss how the North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission monitors bat populations across the state along with how you can be a bat steward here on the Outer Banks and help bats easily in your own backyards.

[violetgibson]

Very nice presentation.
Maybe you know this, but when you are in the Midwest area, if you can visit, Henry Doorly Zoo in Omaha is huge, and beautiful. They have a nocturnal enclosure which has a darkened environment. They have some beautiful bats, and I know you would love the exhibits. There are little brown bats ( my favorite) in an enclosure which has no glass. It is enclosed in net. I held my hand up to feel the breeze as they flutter to the net. Some actually got curious, and clung to the net to sniff my fingers! Some even tolerate a two second tummy tickle! There is hand sanitizer for visitors to use before touching, but it is a good idea to bring moist towelettes for after, because guess what is coating the net! 😳 I love love visiting them. The little browns are one of my favorite critters to visit at that zoo. There are somewhere between two dozen to fifty of them in the enclosure, and so there is constant fluttering in there.

The thing I love about that zoo is that they have the happiest, healthiest residents I have seen in a zoo. There are free range residents too, including a huge field of prairie dogs. They are sometimes approachable.

Anyway, here I sound like a marketing agent. I just love how the bat enclosure is right there.
Thanks to ambassadors like you, people are showing more interest in bats than a few decades ago. 👍

Keep up the great work.

[deborahelliott]

The fungus lives only where it's cold all the time?